Jaimie Bleck

Valence Issues in African Elections Navigating Uncertainty and the Weight of the Past

Previous analyses of African politics have mistaken parties’ dearth of position taking on issues as an absence of substantive electoral debate. The authors demonstrate that political parties tackle substantive issues during African elections, but generally voice them through valence appeals rather than by staking out distinct positions. The authors theorize that uncertainty, coupled with the single-party heritage and the elite dominance of African electoral politics, leads parties to employ valence discourse in their national election campaigns. With evidence from 950 newspaper articles during seven election cycles in African countries, the authors show that politicians predominantly use valence discourse when discussing political issues in the period approaching elections. They find tentative evidence that opposition actors are more likely to take positions than incumbents, and that civil society is more likely to raise position issues than political parties. This contribution aims to enrich the debate on electoral issues in Africa, but also draw greater attention to the potential impact of valence discourse on party systems in a comparative context.

Parties and Issues in Francophone West Africa: Towards a Theory of Non-Mobilization

This contribution proposes a general framework to explain why political parties fail to mobilize citizens along substantive issues in West Africa. We argue that many political issues exist, which could potentially mobilize African voters, but that most political parties struggle to capture these issues. Due to the youth of the electoral process and inexperience of opposition parties, as well as the shared profile of the political elite, candidates and parties struggle to differentiate and establish themselves as credible ‘issue-owners’. When parties discuss issues, they focus on establishing their own competence in an issue-area, rather than claiming ownership of ideological space. Drawing on patterns we observed in six Francophone countries, we offer a typology of issues, as valence or unclaimed, to predict the likelihood that opposition parties engage with them in their electoral campaigns.

Capturing the Airwaves, Capturing the Nation? A Field Experiment on State-Run Media Effects in the Wake of a Coup

Investigating the media’s effect on citizens immediately after a nondemocratic regime transition has thus far remained elusive to scholars, despite the frequency of such transitions. This study examines the effect of putschist-controlled broadcasting in the wake of Mali’s 2012 coup and separatist insurgency. We leverage a field experiment of a radio (vs. flashlight) distribution program in an area where citizens’ only form of mass media is state-run radio. The putschists waged a campaign infused with nationalism to attempt to legitimize their rule. We find that, while radio exposure boosted national identity importance and willingness to delay elections, it did not elevate explicit approval for the junta, which suggests that nondemocratic regimes are less able to win approval using state broadcasting than previously thought, even while such broadcasting may affect citizens’ attitudes and identity.

Alice Kang. Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy

In Alice Kang’s Bargaining for Women’s Rights: Activism in an Aspiring Muslim Democracy, readers are introduced to the contentious debates about the inclusion of women’s rights policy in Niger. Based on fourteen months of fieldwork, the author provides a vivid exploration of domestic politics as the Muslim-majority state negotiates its transition to democracy. Kang shows that political actors adopt some women’s rights policy, while simultaneously rejecting comparable legislation on women’s rights. In Niger, the government repeatedly rejects attempts to revise its policy on marriage, divorce and inheritance law and does not ratify the African Union’s regional treaty on women’s rights. However, in the same time period, it ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and implemented a gender quota, which generated substantial gains in women’s representation after Niger’s transition to democracy. From 1970 to 2011, the number of women in parliament increased from 0 to 13 percent and the number of women in the cabinet increased from zero to a quarter of all presidential advisors (81). Why does the government adopt some pro-woman policies and reject others? What explains this variation? Kang argues that the key lies in understanding how members of domestic civil society, including women’s activists and conservative actors, mobilize within the domestic political context. She underscores the central role of women’s activists in bringing women’s rights policy to the attention of lawmakers and making these types of policies “thinkable” (22) within the local context. They draw on historical references to female pre-colonial leaders, employ the language of democracy and make appeals for rights and inclusion of Niger’s wives, mothers and daughters. However, these advocacy groups do not operate in a vacuum (3). They face counter-mobilization by conservative groups that view these policies as inconsistent with local and Islamic traditions. These groups make similar appeals to local understandings of democracy and governance to make the proposed policies “unthinkable.” In her description of the debates and deliberation over these issues, Kang highlights the diversity of actors in each camp and shows that sometimes their positions and strategies also vary. Kang’s book is refreshing because it puts domestic politics and domestic actors up front. Readers learn about serious programmatic debates in Niger’s political establishment and public spheres. International actors are present in the book, and some of these actors enact serious efforts to pass women’s rights legislation, but ultimately the success or failure of specific policy lies in the actions of domestic actors. It also moves an analysis of African politics out of the executive’s office, to look at the many veto players and pro-reform advocates that populate other branches of government and civil society.